AMD Ryzen wants to conquer the world, one server at a time
Gigabyte’s Giga Computing unleashes affordable 1U servers with Ryzen inside
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AMDRyzen-basedweb hosting servicesare now commonplace, so it is perhaps not too surprising therefore that given ECC support and high core count, another manufacturer has decided to go all in and launched entry-level Ryzen servers.
Giga Computing, a subsidiary of popularmotherboardmanufacturer Gigabyte, unleashed four of these newservers, all in 1U format with one shorter version foredge computing.
Of the quartet, the R133-C11 is the one which is most appealing because it can handle up to eight SATA drives (a mix of 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch ones) and has four LAN ports (two 10GbE and two 1GbE). It can accommodateRyzen“Zen 4” CPUs with a TDP of up to 170W which includes the top of the rangeAMD Ryzen 9 7950Xwith its 16-cores, 32-threads and integrated graphics.
Power up
There’s a bunch of Xeon server processors with 16 cores, including four launched in this quarter (excluding the W series for workstation). But none can match the 7950X’s base clock speed (4.5GHz), L3 cache (64MB) or price (less than $600). WhereIntelstill has the upper hand is on RAM support (up to 4TB), dual-CPU support and a bunch of Intel-only features.
Gigabyte sees the Ryzen 7000 series as being used in workspaces, telecommunications cabinets anddedicated hostingscenarios. Since it is a server, it has a baseboard management controller (BMC) forremote monitoring and management(RMM)/Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) plus redundant 800W PSUs and Gigabyte’s full stack of server management software.
It has two PCIe slots, one a Gen5 x16 and the other Gen4 x4, plus one M.2 slot (PCIe 4.0) for a compatibleSSD. Other than the three USB ports, Gigabyte saw fit to use a miniDP video connector, which puzzles us to say the least. HDMI would have been a much better option here as it is a more widely accepted connector and you can always use a spare TV as a backupmonitor.
Ryzen to rule the roost?
I already explained whyI believe AMD should let go of the Threadripper brandcompletely and perhaps rename it toRyzen Proinstead. Consumer-grade Ryzen processors are powerful enough now to take on new, professional, use cases thanks to ECC support, higher core count, clock speeds and wider availability.
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AMD has a couple of 16-coreEPYC processorsbut their support for much larger memory (12 slots), more PCIe lanes and two CPUs make them fit for different workloads that Ryzen SKUs simply can’t touch.
I expect other manufacturers to follow suit and launch more Ryzen-based server andworkstationproducts in the coming months. Asrock is another manufacturer that has seen a gap in the market and launched several products over the past two years.
Oh and do remember that there’s another chip, theRyzen 9 7950X3Dwhich can be plugged into these servers with a whopping 128MB of L3 cache thanks to its 3D V-cache technology. Some latency sensitive, specialist applications e.g. CFD and mechanical simulations like Ansys CFX, Fluent or Mechanical could see a significant performance bump on a budget.
Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
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